Chesley bonestell biography of barack

Oh sure, you can argue Picasso, Rothko, Dali, Chagall... but these artists influenced art. Bonestell influenced the course of civilization. Specifically, the minds that would send mankind to the moon.

Originally trained and employed as an architect, Bonestell had always dabbled in astronomy subjects, and in the 1940s and 1950s he was the premiere space illustrator, doing mind-boggling illustrations for LIFE and Colliers magazines on mankind's future in space. Concurrently, Bonestell worked as a matte painter and special effects artist for movie studios. Illustrating fantastic scenes for (among other films) Citizen Kane, Heinlein's Destination Moon,The Conquest of Space and H.G. Wells' War of the Worlds. He became the highest-paid matte artist of the era.

But what set Bonestell apart from sci-fi pulp artists was his close association with Wernher von Braun, the top German rocket scientist (and father of the Saturn V), Willy Ley, another German rocket scientist with a gift for written space evangelism (sort of a teutonic Carl Sagan), and Robert Richardson, an American astronomer. The Conquest of Space (1949), Conquest of the Moon (1953), The Exploration of Mars (1954), and The World We Live In (1955) were books all lavishly illustrated with astoundingly realistic scenes by Chesley Bonestell.

These widely-circulated articles, books and movies in the major media of the day caught the attention of many young impressionable minds and forever changed their direction. Many of these youngsters would become the scientists, astronomers, and engineers involved in the US space program. The dream of manned spaceflight in the 1950s, would, with Bonestellian momentum, lan

If Lucian Rudaux was the Grandfather of space art, Chesley Bonestell was the father. He was born on January 1, 1888, 15 years before the Wright brothers first flew and 38 years before the launch of the first liquid-fuel rocket. When he died 98 years later, men had walked on the moon and spacecraft had visited most of the planets and many of the moons of the solar system.

Bonestell’s paintings not only anticipated 20th century space exploration, they helped to bring it about. So realistic were his depictions of other worlds that visiting them no longer seemed fantasy. His artwork looked like picture postcards taken by some future astronaut.

Bonestell started drawing at age five and be­gan formal art instruction by the time he was 12. When he was 17, he visited Lick Observatory where he was in­spired by seeing Saturn through the observatory’s giant refractors. As soon as he returned home, Bonestell sketched a picture of the planet as he had observed it—probably his first attempt at space art.

Bonestell eventually became an architectural designer and renderer. One of his first professional jobs was working with the legendary Willis Polk on the reconstruction of San Francisco after the great earthquake and fire. Polk quickly made Bonestell his chief designer. In New York, Bonestell assisted Wil­liam van Alen in the design of the Chrysler Building (its famous gargoyles are Bonestell’s work). Later, Bonestell worked on the Golden Gate Bridge.

During this time, he kept up his interest in astronomy, filling sketchbooks with extraterrestrial scenes, like this one:

In 1938, Bonestell began a new career in Hollywood as a spe­cial effects matte painter. The first film he worked on was Orson Welles’s Citizen Kane. All the views of turn-of-the-century New York and of Charles Foster Kane’s mansion, Xan­adu, are Bonestell’s artwork. In The Fountainhead, Bonestell in a sense was Howard Roark: al

Chesley Bonestell was born long before the flight of the first airplane, and yet he’s well-known as the most influential people in aerospace art. The painter, designer and illustrator died the year of the Challenger disaster—1986—but not before witnessing humankind embrace space in much the way he’d dreamed.

You see, Bonestell not only helped to popularize manned space travel and inspire sci-fi art and illustration, his ideas directly influenced the way US space scientists imagined the future of space exploration from Earth’s orbit to the Moon and other planets.

Wernher von Braun, the father of the US space program once wrote that “In my many years of association with Chesley I have learned to respect, nay fear, this wonderful artist’s obsession with perfection. My file cabinet is filled with sketches of rocket ships I had prepared to help him in his art work—only to have them returned to me with pene­trating detailed questions or blistering criticism of some in­consistency or oversight.”

The following set of images shows a fraction of Bonestell’s very best works of art. They prove that he earned the title of “Father of Modern Space Art”.

Separation Over the Pacific

Source: Heritage Auctions

Saturn Viewed from Titan, c. 1952

Source: Heritage Auctions

Crashing the Unknown, AirResearch Mfg. ad, Aviation Week, August 21, 1950

Source: Heritage Auctions

Solar System

Source: Heritage Auctions

Rocket Ferry Leaving Mars, c. 1964

Source: Heritage Auctions

The Exploration of Mars, c. 1955

Source: Heritage Auctions

Orbital Rocket Airplane… Nova Zembla, c. 1976

Source: Forbes

Saturn-sized booster pushes interstellar expedition toward Earth orbit, c. 1964

Source: Forbes

Destination Moon (Pathé, 1950)

Source: Heritage Auctions

Chesley Bonestell designed the spaceship in the scifi movie When Worlds Collide (Paramount, 1951).

Source: Heritage Auctions

Source: Herita